


Written in Reverse

by withthepilot



Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-30
Updated: 2010-12-30
Packaged: 2017-10-14 05:56:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/146112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withthepilot/pseuds/withthepilot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wants her the way everyone else wants her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Written in Reverse

He almost thinks he imagines it the first time: the way she peers at him over the rim of her cocktail glass, the way she hikes up the hem of her cocktail dress. And he begins to wonder if the inside of her mouth tastes like a sweet cocktail, too.

"Hey, Legs," he says to her when she joins the table. Beside him, Chris smirks and nudges his side as if to say, _Give it a rest, man_ , but he's feeling playful and he can't be bothered to care. "Nice of you to join us."

"Nice of you to have me, Stud," she says in return. She sips from her drink and catches a stray droplet of vermillion red with her bottom lip before it darts all the way down the exterior of the glass.

He loosens his tie and nods. He'd like to have her.

*

The night she leaves early, he has one too many of these whisky-soaked concoctions and finds himself in a payphone outside the bar, a three-thousand dollar suit hanging from his shoulders like a rumpled, overused dishrag. He doesn't know why she left or where she went. He shoves coins into the slot, quarters and dimes that just happened to be in his pocket, like magic, and he half-wonders if she put them there.

"Hello?" she answers, and there's muffled voices in the background. She could be home or at a piano bar, another man's apartment. Anywhere. "Who's this?"

"I thought I noticed something," he says, loudly, just in case she can't hear. He steadies himself with one palm against the cool metal of the phone booth. "Did I? I mean...just tell me if I did."

She pauses and then laughs. He closes his eyes and smiles, thinking of the backward tilt of her head, the jut of her finely pointed chin, her throat piercing the air like an elegant guitar string, plucked.

"Don't embarrass me," he mumbles, still grinning like a loon. "Don't break my heart."

"You're just full of demands, aren't you? You know I'll just do what I want in the end."

He knows. "What about what I want?"

"This isn't about you," she says.

"Yeah, yeah."

She laughs again and he does, too, before he hangs up.

*

She gets a hotel room all to herself, being the only woman on the tour, and it smells of gardenias. After a few nights, just that scent is enough to make him hard, as it floats on the air and past his nostrils with a quiet promise.

They take opposite stairwells and unravel as they stalk the corridor toward each other. She gives him a sly smile as she discards her bracelets, her silk shrug. He nods his approval as he removes his cuff links and unknots his tie. He pushes his fingers into her thick, shining hair as she reaches out to slip the keycard into the lock.

In the morning, he wakes to the smell of strong coffee and the hotel's miniature cinnamon buns that she seems to be in love with. He watches from the bed as she slips one into her mouth, then licks the sugary remnants from her fingertips. He crawls onto his stomach and folds his arms beneath his head as she sits down on an ottoman and pulls on her stockings, slow and deliberate, over one pointed foot, then the other. Her underwear is lacy and hits at the highest point of her hip, refashioning her legs as narrow skyscrapers. The way she bends is graceful and delicate, practiced.

"You're like watching a movie, you know that?" he murmurs. She smiles teasingly and stands in her heels, strutting her way back to the foot of the bed.

"I bet you say that to all the girls."

She bends at the hip and drapes herself over him, running her gentle hands down the slope of his back, kissing her way from the base of his spine to the very top. Tendrils of her dark hair tickle his bare skin. He buries his face in the crook of his arm until she reaches his nape, and then he lifts his head; the bridge of his nose skims the golden curve of her necklace. She's never looked more indulgent.

He's not in love with her. But he's in love with _this_.

"Every single one," he says, seriously, before he kisses her.

*

He doesn't blame her when she stops calling. Her star's burning bright and the world is full of men with better stories to tell, more interesting war wounds. He supposes someone might even know some funnier jokes, but he hopes not.

Either way, there's no shortage of people willing to live between her legs every night and spend each morning watching as she darts around the corners of a well-decorated room, samples from a breakfast plate, sprays perfume over her shoulders.

It's just one of those things—one of those times in a man's life that he's damn lucky to commit to memory. And he does recall it often, usually just before waking, when the sunlight first creeps onto his brow bone, bright as the gleam of her bracelets sliding off her wrist—beautiful trinkets, easily discarded.

*

He's surprised when he gets an invitation to one of the parties for her new film, but it's just like her to make him an offer he can't refuse. The people he recognizes in the crowd are many, the ones he knows scattered and few, and then there's her, gleaming in the center of the room as men and women alike fight hard for her attention. She sips from a burgundy-colored drink and suffuses her glow, entertaining them all.

She spots him as she's led up a spiral staircase to another floor and he smiles and nods to her, another loyal subject in her adoring dominion. Her answering grin is wider and whiter than he even remembers.

He flings himself into a cab a few hours later, about to give the addled driver directions when his phone buzzes. The bright name on the screen makes him laugh in surprise.

"Zoe?" he asks, picking up. He looks out the back window as the engine kicks in and the car begins to move.

"John!" He hears the sound of dying music behind her and pictures her swaying her way out of the club, her fingernails skimming the walls. Her voice turns whisper-soft and he can hear her smiling, the way he always has. "I think I saw something. Did I see something?"

"Yeah, yeah... I think you did, yeah."

"Come back and show me again."

He's still laughing as he leans forward and tells the driver to turn the cab around.


End file.
